An Athlete Dying Young

I accept that my life is completely accidental and random, ruled by chance. You can blow on the dice all you want, but whether they come up 'seven' is still a function of random luck. 

Such stoic acceptance makes it easier to soldier on when bad things happen to good people. Sometimes that means faith in the Guy up in a cloud pulling the strings; sometimes it means accepting bad karma swirling through an unforgiving universe; sometimes it means young men die needlessly.

There are good people who are dealt a bad hand by fate, and bad people who live long, comfortable, privileged lives. A small twist of fate can save or end a life; random chance is a permanent and powerful player.

If you took World Lit 101 you probably read “To an Athlete Dying Young,” A. E. Housman 19^th century classic poem about a former star athlete who passed still in his youth. Housman sees the hometown hero in an envious light, having died young, he will never lose his youth to old age. The poem ironically suggests that perhaps this fate is better than watching one’s glory fade over time.

I don’t know. Death is coming no matter what, but when I was young, I gave it no passing thought, too occupied with the next big challenge. When you are young death is a distant rumor. As a young man, even when I wasn't sure where I was going, I was always in a hurry.

On January 27, 1949, a black man in the age of Jim Crow, Crystal City native Charles (Bonk) Byas, age 20, suffered an accidental but tragic death in a Golden Gloves boxing match in Moberly, Missouri. In the third and final round of the bout, Byas and his white opponent cracked heads together. Byas received a deep gash under his eye. The referee stopped the fight immediately. Byas died in ambulance in route to the hospital without regaining consciousness. The local Coroner attributed Byas death to a cerebral hemorrhage.

In 1949 Byas was a student at Lincoln University in Jefferson City, MO. He was in the Pre-Med program. Byas had graduated from the racially segregated Douglas High School in Festus, MO in 1947. He would have never sat in a classroom with white kids. He had been a basketball and track star for the Trojans. After high school graduation Byas worked for a year for the city of Crystal City to acquire funds to enable him to attend college. He was by all obituary accounts from family and friends a focused and well-liked young man. Known by all as Bonk, Byas was the son of Joseph and Corine Byas and was survived by six brothers Joseph, Donald, Marvin, Wayne, Richard and Cecil.

Byas is a storied Crystal City name. All seven Byas boys were accomplished athletes. In the fall of 1955, Bonk  Byas second youngest brother of Richard Byas, helped integrate Crystal City High School and in his only season as a Hornet was both a football star in the fall and in the spring took three gold medals in leading CCHS to a state track championship. Richard was voted by his majority white classmates to the office of Senior Class Vice President.

According to a story in the Moberly Evening-Democrat, reported the day following his death in the ring, Bonk Byas had passed a pre-fight physical. He was declared by the attending physician to be in excellent condition.

Byas’ opponent that fateful night was William Holmes, a freshman at Northeast Missouri State Teachers College in Kirksville Missouri. Holmes had graduated the previous spring from St. Louis Beaumont High School. He was the starting center as a freshman in the previous fall of 1948 on the Bulldog football team.

Both fighters were bleeding from face cuts after the first round of what was described by the local media as, “a whirlwind slugging match.”  Byas suffered a small cut near his left eye. Holmes was bleeding from the nose and from a cut on his face. The referee inspected both fighters in their corners after the first round before allowing the fight to continue. The third round was described as a. “battling give and take,” that brought the packed auditorium crowd to its feet. The fight was stopped, and Holmes declared the winner by technical knockout, with 33 seconds left in the third and final round.

Byas entered the fight at 175 1/2 pounds and Holmes at 162 pounds. Both fighters had won two previous tournament bouts.

The referee and one judge declared Byas the winner of the first round 20 to 18, while the second judge favorite Holmes, 20 to 19. All three gave Holmes the second round by a slight margin of 20 to 19. With less than a minute to go in the fight, Holmes was still taking punishing blows from Byas but found an opening and drove Byas to the ropes with a series of left and right blows to the head.

A signal conceding the fight was then  given by Byas’ corner man, Charles Hoard, Lincoln University’s Dean of Men. Byas was still on his feet when the referee stopped the fight, walked after the stoppage to his corner and then collapsed to his knees. Lifted to his feet, Byas then slumped again over the ropes. He never regained consciousness.

The Kirksville coaches made the decision not to inform Holmes of his opponent’s death until after the team had returned to Kirksville. When Holmes learned of the tragedy, ke immediately returned to his home in St. Louis.

Life has a funny way of doing things. Ironically, Charles (Bonk) Byas’ final opponent, Bill Holmes, a decade after the chance encounter in Moberly with the Crystal City native, started a six-year run as the Head Football Coach of the Crystal City rival conference foe, Herculaneum. Holmes was ultra successful leading Herculaneum football. Sixty years later, Holmes’ name is still revered in area football circles.

Coach Holmes employed at Herculaneum as assistants some CCHS football royalty: Ike Jennings, Dick Cook and Rodney Mills. Jennings would replace Holmes as head coach at Herculaneum and Cook and Mills would move on to long and distinguished careers as Hornet coaches. The Herculaneum High School Principal during the final years of Holmes tenure was future Crystal City boys’ basketball coach Rolla Herbert.

The 1963 contest against Holmes’ Herculaneum squad is widely recognized as the best game in the history of Crystal City Hornet football. Both teams entered the November showdown, the last game of the year for both teams, undefeated. With no post season state playoffs in 1963, this was a winner-take-all match up and the buildup was intense. On a bone-chilling cold night, the biggest crowd to ever see a football game at Dr. J.J. Commerford Field were privy to a classic. Herculaneum overcame a two-score 4th quarter deficit, scoring the go-ahead touchdown on a 9-yard last second pass to dethrone the Hornets, 18-13.

With 1:40 left in the game, “Herky” had scored a touchdown but had muffed the point after attempt and still trailed by one point, 13-12. After a mad scramble occurred for the ensuing on-side kick and after several minutes of debate amongst the officials as to who had recovered, much to the dismay of the Hornets’ bench, the ball was awarded to the Blackcats, setting up the last second heroics.

Ironically, if Herculaneum had been successful on the extra point attempt to tie the game at 13-13, the Hornet coaching staff had already made the decision to run out the clock and with no overtime rule in 1963, the game would have ended in a tie. By missing the extra point and being forced into the desperation on-side kick, Herculaneum had unknowingly given itself a chance to win.

Coach Holmes was also my football coach from 1977-79 at Central Methodist College in Fayette, MO. I was one of many CCHS grid grads who played at CMC for Coach Holmes. He was a tough man. For three years he intimidated me. No one crossed Coach Holmes. We had heard the rumor that he once had killed a man in the boxing ring. None of us doubted its authenticity.  I had no idea until a few years ago that the deceased opponent was from my hometown and from a well-known and respected family.

Some coaches utilize a star system. Not Coach Holmes. He demanded role players. He was the star. We had our star players, but that was their role, their cog in the wheel, no better or less than the rest of us. If you are going to have a team of role players, then you had better have a team of players who truly understand their roles. I knew mine and I never swerved from my lane. Drilling down the idea of “just do your job,” Coach Holmes built a culture of accountability and locker room cohesiveness. He kept his words few and cryptic and his players on their toes. I stayed as far away from him as I could.

Coach Holmes was in many ways a bizarre character. He would greet all with his trademark booming welcome of, “Hey Baby.” He was the archetype of the coach those of us a certain age once played for. He had cut steps into a step hill on the side of his practice field. Raise his practice field ire and it was, “get your ass on that hill,” with the promise we would run until he was tired. Despite his old school approach to discipline, he was far ahead of his time when it came to spreading the field and throwing the football.

Coach Holmes eventually ran afoul of the Central Methodist administration and by my senior year we had a new coach, a 14-year former NFL All-Pro linebacker who had recently coached with the Oakland Raiders. He was the worst coach I ever played for, a complete nut case. Regardless, I did have a good senior year. But the League was not in my future, so it was on to the next challenge.

Fast forward. In 1984, I became the 26-year-old head boys basketball coach at Monroe City, MO High School. Irony struck again, as that same summer 55 year old Bill Holmes was named the head football coach at Paris, MO High school, just a few miles down the road from my new home. We reunited into a completely new relationship. We became beer drinking buddies.

Coach Holmes lasted two seasons at Paris. In January 1986, he resigned. I was surprised as his teams had done well on the field. He told me that one day while fulfilling his duties as the high school lunchroom supervisor, he had requested a boy dial down his enthusiasm. The teenager responded with an inquiry as to Coach Holmes’ interest of engaging in a concessional sex act. Coach Holmes demonstrated his lack of interest by hanging the young scholar from a nearby coat rack.

Coach now needed a job but with an ex-wife in Fayette, he was not moving back there. He had an old house in Paris, which describes 95% of the 1986 domiciles there. He was in a constant state of home renovation and improvement. Past the age of 70 years, Coach Holmes by hand dug under his existing house a new basement.

 I recommended him as a full-time sub in Monroe City. The kids loved him. He also became my scout of upcoming basketball opponents. He had a surprisingly sharp grasp of the intricacies of basketball strategy.

In 1986, we had a basketball team marching towards the state tournament. On a Wednesday night, in the second week of March we played a state sectional game in Kirksville against Scotland County. We won 63-51, our 14^th straight win to raise our season record to 24-3.

The sectional game opposite us was won by Blair Oaks who would now be our Saturday night quarterfinal opponent. I had sent Coach Holmes to Eldon to scout the game.  Blair Oaks’ record stood at 29-1. The Jefferson City area school was ranked number 1 in the state, with a front line that stood 6’8, 6’5 and 6’4. We did not have a starter over 6’1. What we did have were a bunch of nail drivers who could run and jump and a cocky young coach. We feared no one.

With little video tape available in those days, in person scouting was the norm. I met with Coach Holmes after our sectional win around midnight to begin preparation for the Saturday matchup with Blair Oaks, the winner headed to the state Final Four.

My obvious first question was how do we guard Blair Oaks’ 6’8 star, who would go on to play Division 1 college basketball?

“How many fouls does your post player get,” Coach Holmes asked?

What? I was tired and now concerned. Five, I stated the obvious.

“No.”  Coach said, “you have 20 fouls.”

What?

“You have four midgets you rotate (at the post),” Coach Holmes declared, “so you have 20 fouls from your post. Use them. Every time the big guy touches the ball in the paint, knock him on his ass.”  

To clarify, I repeated, “Foul him every time he touches the ball in the paint?”

Wrong answer. Fifteen years prior I would have heard, “get you ass on that hill!” This night Coach was more constructive, but still emphatic.  “Hey baby, I didn’t say foul him, I said knock him on his ass. He is soft. He will quit.”

We did and he did. The Bill Laimbeer approach was perfect. We led by 23 in the first half and cruised onto the State Finals. Best scouting report I ever got.

I have fond memories of Coach Holmes that spring of 1986 sitting on my living room floor playing patty cake with my infant son. I could not have imagined the relationship we had as player/coach blossoming seven years later into this rapprochement status. Randon fate, again. I can trace our progression back to a young punk hanging from a coat rack in the Paris High School cafeteria.

Coach Holmes passed away on January 27, 2017, in Paris, MO at the age of 86.

Bonk Byas brother Donald was the father of D.J. and Rhonda Byas. D.J. was an all-state running back for the Hornets, graduating in 1971. Rhonda, class of 1972, was a senior cheerleader and volleyball player, defiantly one of the cool kids. While in 1972 she ruled, I was a lowly CCHS freshman.

Fast forward to the fall of 1975, I was enrolled as a college freshman on a football scholarship at Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville, MO. Rhonda Byas was entering her senior year at NWMSU. We were the only two CC kids on campus.

Summer football camp was three weeks of hell before the start of the fall class semester. By the second week I was homesick. It is something every kid away from home for the first time experiences, but when you are 8 hours from home and in its throes, it seems like the end of the world.

Rhonda’s work study job was checking meal tickets at the cafeteria door. On a slow day at breakfast during my second week on campus, she looked at my card, and said something like, “I heard you were going to school here.” I was surprised she knew who I was.

Rhonda asked how I was doing. I lied. I am sure she could tell. You need to meet some people, she said, be outside the dorm at 8 tonight.

At the appointed time she picked me up in a VW beetle and took me to an off-campus party. In 1975 there might have been 50 black students at the rural college - and they were all at this party. It was a scene straight from a 70’s Blaxploitation film: Afros roomy enough to sleep six, hazy marijuana smoke, strobe lights and Shaft posters galore. And my skinny little butt was the sole representative of the Caucasian race.

One of the football team’s star players was a bad dude from the KC Paseo named Claude. He cornered me demanding to know why I was at a black party with, “the best-looking sister on campus.” Rhonda intervened and told Claude to ease off. “He is cool, he is from Crystal City and we go way back.” Right, all the way back to lunch, I thought.

Rhonda Byas didn’t have to reach out to me. I am sure she sensed I was struggling. Maybe her freshman year she had gone through the same. For whatever reason, it helped. I didn’t suddenly morph into a Big Man on Campus - I remember walking home that night alone - but slowly things got better.

Two years and a school transfer later, my coach was a man whose right fist had accidently cut her uncle’s life tragically short. Rhonda was born in 1954, five years after the death of an uncle she never knew. Rhonda Byas passed away on September 28, 2013.

I like to write about growing up in my hometown of Crystal City, MO. I like to write about human conditions. I like to write about how life events develop; people come and go. The above story checks all the boxes. These randomly diverting scenes that form the tapestry of my life are often just so many distracting stitches. I must strain to see the fundamental fibers that tie them all together. But they are there.